An immediate question comes to my mind. What should it be called in Chinese? Still 普通鵟 (meaning common buzzard in English) or 東方鵟 (meaning eastern buzzard in English)? When we edited the book “A Handbook of Hong Kong Terrestrial Birds” (to be published), we had similar puzzle about Chinese bird names.

If we call “Buteo japonicas” Eastern Buzzard in English here in Hong Kong, there is no point to call it 普通鵟 in Chinese (meaning common buzzard in English) here in Hong Kong. It does not make much sense for English name of a bird meaning one thing and Chinese name meaning another. Further, how should we call “Buteo buteo” seen in Europe while on vacation, Common Buzzard? It is not common to us! Would it be better to be called Western Buzzard? If English names are local and only the scientific/Latin names are universally unique, what about calling “Buteo japonicas” Common Buzzard here then?

In fact, I don’t like the idea of calling birds “Common”, or even more “Eastern” or “Western”. These words have a relative sense and sometimes create unnecessary confusion. Common Starling is an example. It is not the common starling in Hong Kong. Great Egret we see here is Eastern Great Egret, while Osprey is Western Osprey!